KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An escalating culture war in the United States pits our appetites against our compassion for animals — and the Midwest is a key battleground.
Agriculture interests see an enemy in the Humane Society of the United States. One of their main voices calls the animal-welfare organization a bunch of “humaniacs” who ultimately want to remove the eggs and bacon from your plate, the burger from your bun and the dog from the foot of your bed.
Unfazed, the Humane Society dismisses what its director calls a “bilge pump” of lies and defamations. It is pushing ahead, state by state, for laws against cruelty, from “puppy mills” to intensive confinement of animals in factory farms.
This is getting ugly.
Some of the arenas:
—In Kansas, the president of the state Farm Bureau is firing off complaints to corporations that show signs of empathy with the society.
—In Missouri, there may be a surreal showdown on the November ballot over a proposed law to regulate dog breeders — its opponents are led by the head of the state pork association.
—Nationally, agribusiness interests launch daily salvos against the society through a new outlet at HumaneWatch.org.
The society says its critics are spewing inflammatory rhetoric.
“They see (our) strength and they’re very paranoid about it,” said society president Wayne Pacelle. “But we remind them and others that we are seeking simply to curb the worst abuses in livestock.”
The industry doesn’t buy that.
“Ultimately, the Humane Society wants to make it more difficult to produce livestock on the scale that this country requires to meet demand,” said Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Industry argues that agriculture is vitally important to the economy and that each farmer produces food to sustain 155 people. Unnecessary rules on animal welfare pushed by the society, it says, will drive up prices, cause food shortages and force farmers out of business.
The society denies that it wants to destroy livestock production, although it does advocate eating less meat for health reasons and because livestock farms are heavy greenhouse-gas emitters.
The Humane Society is a big operation with 11 million supporters who contributed nearly $87 million in 2008. It calls itself a mainstream voice with a mission “to celebrate animals and confront cruelty.”
Among its crusades, the society fights against intensive confinement of livestock in factory farms. That includes cages with floor spaces smaller than a piece of typing paper for egg-laying hens and crates for pregnant sows that don’t allow them to move around for months.
The society also presses poultry producers to switch to gas to kill animals as a more humane approach than “electrically shocking them into paralysis, cutting their throats while they are conscious and sometimes even drowning them in tanks of scalding water.”
Among the society’s tactics is to buy stock in publicly held corporations so it can introduce shareholder resolutions for more humane animal treatment. It has aimed this tool at McDonald’s, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and The Kroger Co., and intends to use it with Jack in the Box, Steak ‘n Shake and Domino’s Pizza.
Among the society’s victories have been announcements by some companies, such as Wendy’s, Sonic Corp. and Subway, that they will start to buy cage-free eggs. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest grocery, said last month that all of the eggs under its own label were now cage-free.
The society also has successfully promoted ballot initiatives or legislation in a succession of states to ban intensive livestock confinement. At least six states now have laws banning or phasing out sow-gestation crates.
One of the society’s biggest triumphs was in California, where 63 percent of voters in 2008 approved a law to phase out the confinement of animals “in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs.”
The success of the California initiative “sent a shudder up the spines of many involved in animal agriculture,” said Meatingplace.com, an industry news outlet.
Defenders of big livestock production say it is in farmers’ self-interest not to abuse their animals.
“If the farmer or rancher wants to be profitable, he has to take care of the animals so they can take care of him,” said Steve Baccus, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau.
He added that cages keep chickens from injuring each other and crates prevent sows from crushing their piglets.
But the Humane Society’s successes have been a wake-up call for the industry, said Lipton of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The Center for Consumer Freedom, which bills itself as a research organization on food, beverage and lifestyle issues, last month launched a Web site to fight back. It accuses the society of soaking up money from people who mistakenly believe the national organization helps support their local dog and cat shelters. It then uses that money, critics say, to promote its extremist agenda.
The society acknowledges that it does not run local animal shelters and does not make a lot of grants. Instead, it champions legislation across the country, as well as operates five large animal-care sanctuaries and provides mobile veterinary care in poor areas.
The 115,000-member Kansas Farm Bureau is also in the fray. Baccus recently sent a letter to the chief executive officer of Bank of America, urging the institution to reconsider donating 25 cents to the society for every $100 charged on one of its credit cards.
And last month, Baccus wrote the CEO of Sonic with a warning about its new animal-welfare policy.
“I have heard from literally hundreds of our members who say, as a result of your decision, they’ve made their last visit to Sonic,” Baccus wrote.
In Ohio, agribusiness tried to pre-empt the society’s influence by proposing a state board of its own choosing to set livestock-care standards. The society took a setback when voters overwhelmingly approved that constitutional amendment. But now the society is coming back with a proposed referendum to set the minimum standards the new board would have to accept.
Agribusiness in other states are watching the Ohio experience. But the immediate issue here is dogs.
Missouri commercially breeds more puppies than any other state, and the state auditor’s office has found that enforcement against cruel and unhealthful conditions is lacking.
The Better Business Bureau reports that in the last three years, there have been 352 consumer complaints over sick puppies and unexpected veterinary bills in Missouri.
The Humane Society is working to collect about 100,000 signatures to place a measure on the ballot in November to regulate “puppy mills.”
Among other things, it would limit breeders to 50 sexually intact animals.
Agribusiness interests say the bill does nothing to boost enforcement and is a feint by the society to increase its leverage against livestock.
“The dog-breeder issue is simply the beginning, we feel, of what can happen in the future with a broader agenda relating to agriculture,” said Estil Fretwell, spokesman for the Missouri Farm Bureau.
Agribusiness recently formed Missourians for Animal Care to fight the initiative. The chairman is the director of the Missouri Pork Association.
The industry also supports a bill in the General Assembly to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November to establish the right to raise domesticated animals in a humane manner — whether dogs or hogs — without “undue economic burden” from the state. The bill has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.
Another pending bill would create a state livestock-welfare board similar to the one in Ohio.
“It is just to make for certain that agricultural regulations are based on sound science and not upon emotions,” Fretwell said.
“We don’t want outside groups coming into our state trying to get their agendas forced upon us.”
The Humane Society’s Pacelle said that the “puppy mill” bill had nothing to do with livestock and that industry used the same false argument about threats to farmers before Missourians approved a cockfighting ban in 1998.
“I think it’s a shame that mainstream agriculture would allow itself to be associated with cockfighting and puppy mills, which the public revile,” said Pacelle, who added that the society would fight both industry-backed efforts.
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